Cover Story
Reasonable Doubt
Did misleading DNA analysis land an innocent man on death row?
A Posies Pop-Up Show
“Classy clusterfuck” jangled the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday
Danny Barnes Works Harder
Seminal ex-Austinite talks banjo, minimalism, and experimentation
ACL Fest 2016 Lineup
Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar, Mumford & Sons, LCD Soundsystem
Springsteen Seeks New Day in Court
He hopes to be declared innocent of the Yogurt Shop Murders
Weekend Fun Forecast
From Mothers Day to Cinco De Mayo, we’ve got your weekend covered
Maker Faire Austin Returns
Celebration of DIY tech & creation lights up the Palmer Events Center
May the 4th Be With Y’All
“I think female nerds are totally underestimated”
Austin Film Society Takes Over the Marchesa
Lincoln Village site to become permanent two-screen cinema
Day Trips & Beyond: May Events Roundup
A monthly planner of fun and delicious excursions
Cruz Quits Presidential Race
Inevitable exit after Indiana collapse
KRAKATHOOOOM!! Free Comic Book Day Is Soon Upon Us Once Again!
Annual giveaway of popular sequential art stirs area interest, desire
DVDanger: RWBY Volume III
Team Rooster Teeth takes anime back to Japan
Mayor’s Book Club Befriends Lincoln
Our 2016 read is Stephen Harrigan’s A Friend of Mr. Lincoln
Obama Administration Extends Short-Term Medicaid Funds in Texas
Feds, state reach deal on 15-month extension to assist hospitals
Levitation Live Shot: Caribou
Rare pop-up club appearance breathes life into machine beats
Backyard Star Wars
Other Worlds Austin screens fan films for Star Wars Day
Levitation Live Shot: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard
Australian crowd-surfing instigators stomp a tsunami
Levitation Live Shot: Boris, Sunn O))), Sleep
An endurance test of both appreciation and relief
Levitation Live Shot: Black Angels
Stark need breeds a peak performance
Levitation Live Shot: Animal Collective
Electro-Cajun country hoedowns to Afro-club hybrids
Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears
Uber and Lyft spending $8 million-plus to sell Proposition 1
Levitation Live Shot: The Arcs
Black Keys frontman rejuvenates
Levitation Live Shot: Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats
British Blood Lust beasts hammer a childlike sweet spot
Levitation Live Shot: Slowdive
UK shoegazers salvage some Souvlaki
Austin Opera’s Joseph Specter Departing
General director since 2012 is off to lead Arizona Opera
Gina Chavez Tour Diary 5: Dominican Republic
A vibrant lesson in infectious polyrhythms and communal spirit
Levitation Kick-Off
Even after Levitation’s cancellation … the shows went on!
Levitation Rain Checks
Weather-displaced festival re-collects in the clubs
Game of Thrones‘ Missandei Stops by Austin
Nathalie Emmanuel talks about the new season of HBO’s hit show
Mother’s Day
The movie is a moneymaking contrivance, just like the holiday itself
Men & Chicken
Danish black comedy is a nimble tone-shifter
Keanu
A refreshingly silly, unabashed mix of humor, violence, and cuteness
Sing Street
The director of Once and Begin Again helms another joyful music film
Sarrainodu
Telugu action film
Papa: Hemingway in Cuba
A young writer travels to revolutionary Cuba in 1959 to meet his idol
Levitating Platters
Billowing strains of mellow psych-pop, Boogarins’ second album fuses the faraway Dunedin jangle of bands like the Clean and the Chills with song structures and vocal phrasings redolent of Tropicalismo. If Manual lulls at times, that’s sort of the point. The Brazilian quartet’s slowly evolving passages evoke a physiological break from the mad rush. “6000…
On the Outside
Delia Perez Meyer fights to prove her brother’s innocence
Local Levitation
Christian Bland & the Revelators Fri., 4:20pm, Reverberation stage Black Angels guitarist yokes together Syd Barrett and Buddy Holly fantasies in a side project marked by lo-fi vocals and a creeper organ. Holy Wave Fri., 5:50pm, Levitation Tent Psych surfers wax the oddball pop strain, thriving on creative songwriting, while their languorous live show sews…
AISD Proposes a Budget
AISD sees its money go back to the state
Levitating Platters
San Francisco’s BJM always took a pretentiously artsy approach to garage psychedelia, which explains how their rock fervor fades so perfectly into Musique de Film Imaginé, soundtrack to an imaginary film inspired by front maniac Anton Newcombe’s love for French film scores. A suite of languid mood pieces pulses “Après le Vin,” a bedroom-eyed slow…
The Luv Doc: Tastes Like Biebs!
Wherein the Luv Doc contemplates the soft, tender flesh of an almost-royal Canadian
Illusory Impressions
Catherine Davis and Michelle Thompson’s site-specific dance-and-music work will move you in ways you won’t expect
The Hightower Report
What is fueling Hurricane Donnie Trump?
Levitating Platters
Concept albums have become as hackneyed as Sixties lore, but the grindhouse-pulped third (s)platter from Cambridge rockers Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats proves otherwise. Slasher story of an urban bogeyman, The Night Creeper walks damp, cold back alleyways of Seventies London. Imagine Black Sabbath summoning an LP-length song cycle à la Seventh Son-era Iron Maiden…
Smarty Pants
Almost every town in America has streets named Elm and Chestnut. The numbers 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888, and 999 are all multiples of 37. According to Mary Beard, a classics professor at the University of Cambridge, the Roman emperor Elagabalus never wore the same pair of shoes twice. For that and…
Austin’s April Dancers
A month flooded with movement closes with Jennifer Sherburn’s Arena and Tapestry’s Passing It Forward
Notes on Kamp: The Only Way Is Abolition
The death penalty is too flawed to be saved
Levitating Platters
This consistently superlative NYC post-punk quartet turns a new corner with its fifth outing. Moderating the spellbinding verbosity that saturated previous high-water marks like “Ducking & Dodging” from 2014’s Sunbathing Animal gives this latest batch more space to develop and marinate. Droll opener “Dust” cops a minimalist German prog groove that worms into the subconscious,…
Levitation Interviews
Shoegazer, Aussie everywoman, ex-Sonic Youther, and Latin psych superhero talk Levitation.
Zach Theatre’s Ann
Holland Taylor captures every nuance of Ann Richards in this magnificent production
Point Austin: Unlearned History
Vietnam War Summit raises ghosts and questions
Levitating Platters
If Sandy Denny and Crazy Horse dropped acid together, Heron Oblivion might result. Constructed of parts from Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Comets on Fire, and Howlin Rain, the eponymous San Francisco quartet drowns ethereal folk melodies in a cauldron of distortion and feedback. Drummer/singer Meg Baird’s got the fortitude, letting her voice float blissfully…
Levitation Interviews
“If someone said three years ago that Slowdive would re-form, I wouldn’t believe it,” says the band’s singer/guitarist Rachel Goswell. “You just couldn’t write what’s happened over the last couple years.” In their early-Nineties prime, the Reading, UK, quintet dropped three swirling dream-pop albums. As grunge and Britpop superseded an ambient English ilk termed “shoegaze,”…
Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre’s Lumen
The site-specific dance inspired by Dan Flavin’s art evoked pure wonder and worked as a study of threes
Public Notice: Learning to Share?
A full week of Proposition 1
On the Inside
To get to Death Row, drive three hours east to Huntsville. Pass the red-brick prison housing the execution chamber, then take Highway 190 another hour. You’ll cross a forest, then a lake, then head south around the town. The Polunsky Unit is in Livingston, Texas, on a quiet patch of land. Members of the media…
Levitating Platters
Experimental psych-metal act Boris and noise emperor Merzbow shatter sound thresholds at the drop of a megaton guitar pick, but the first disc of Gensho, the Japanese peers’ seventh collaboration, is instead surprisingly accessible. Merzbow adds white noise to classic Boris sweetness like the shoegazing “Farewell,” droning “Akuma No Uta,” and a dreamy “Akirame Flower.”…
Levitation Interviews
Recently, back at her parents’ house in Australia, Courtney Barnett stumbled upon a historic relic: a demo CD from when she first started performing music. Noting the aural revisit as “cringe-worthy, but also nice,” the singer can’t pin down the specific moment of courage a decade ago that pushed the shy 18-year-old to perform onstage…
“Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s”
The Blanton Museum of Art’s retrospective may tap nostalgia for a certain generation, but it can be deeply moving, too
Quote of the Week
“He didn’t come here to remain in the Senate. He came here to run for president.” – Sen. John Cornyn explains Sen. Ted Cruz’s headline-grabbing, scorched-earth legislative tactics to KERA
Levitating Platters
Across a decade and eight LPs, Brooklyn fivepiece Woods have perfected a lo-fi folk prone to spastic jam breakdowns. Ninth offering City Sun Eater in the River of Light now shatters any preconceived notions. The opening title track sounds less like Woods and more in tune with Tropical Rain Forest, building horns and reggae elements…
Levitation Interviews
“These days, I suspend my guitar from a rope, so that it swings freely,” says former Sonic Youth mainstay Lee Ranaldo. “That way, I can play it with a bow, or a drumstick.” 2012 solo LP Between the Times and the Tides unwittingly readied the Manhattan-dweller for his current career path. The previous year, Sonic…
Day Trips: Lt. Henry O. Flipper
Former Buffalo Soldier helped establish mining in the border region.
Headlines
Policy Before Numbers: City Council began its annual budget process with a Wednesday work session, with staff placing emphasis on structural “cost drivers” and policy choices over financial detail at this early stage. See “City Budget Preview Remains Strong, With Notes of Caution,” April 29. Last Thursday, Council moved to include displaced mobile home residents…
Levitating Platters
Haunting, staccato organ opens Black Mountains’ fourth LP, after which “Mothers of the Sun” erupts elemental guitar crunch and a supersonic solo, and genre-bender “You Can Dream” mops psych doom with synth-popped pulses. In a thoughtful, albeit morbid, rendezvous recount, “Cemetery Breeding,” the Vancouver quintet explores well beyond by-the-book psych rock. Stephen McBean and Amber…
Levitation Interviews
The kings of avant-garde drone metal, Sunn 0))) overwhelms Austin for the first time in 14 years for a doom-heavy bill at Levitation. The gig comes in support of Kannon, the Seattle band’s first non-collaborative album since 2009 and one that hearkens back to its ambient grunge roots. “It was like, ‘Let’s make some music…
Hornography
Texas Hosts Oklahoma State The Longhorn Baseball squad, though still inconsistent (20-21, 9-6 Big 12), has been smashing the ball as of late – including last Sunday’s dominating 17-1 victory over No. 11 Texas Tech (31-12, 12-3 Big 12), to take the three-game series. Hoping to keep the offensive momentum going, the Horns host a…
Levitating Platters
Easily their most energetic project, Animal Collective’s intently trying to get you where you’re going on the bouncy Painting With. So much so, in fact, that they premiered the album as a loop at Baltimore’s major airport. On “FloriDada,” the band sings in coastal pastels, swirling synths wrapping the lyrics. The Talking Heads-like “Bagels in…
Levitation Interviews
Los Angeles quartet Chicano Batman plays a disorienting mix of lowrider soul, cumbia, surf, psych, y mucho más. Their forthcoming third LP – recorded in Brooklyn with soul maestro Leon Michels (Aloe Blacc, Lee Fields, the Arcs) – moves the needle toward R&B. Ahead of Levitation, we asked keyboardist and falsetto freaker Bardo Martinez to…
Soccer Watch
The long arm of justice: 27 years after the fact, an English jury found Tuesday that the 96 Liverpool fans who were crushed to death on April 15, 1989, during a match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, had been “unlawfully killed” and were victims of what proved to be fatal police errors in security…
Levitating Platters
The second album from Promised Land Sound walks the same streets as other retro country rock bands, but the Nashville quintet boasts enough snap to put extra pride in its stride. Guitarists Sean Thompson and Peter Stringer-Hye pay homage to the past without copycatting, the latter joining with bassist Joe Scala for the kind of…
Levitation Imaginings
Hard to get some psychs on the horn, so conjured them through other means
Page Two: The Problem With Prop. 1
When someone is lying to you about something, it is usually best not to endorse and empower them
Levitating Platters
Millennial garage-psych wunderkind Ty Segall may yet usurp Jack White as the savior of rock. The California polymath boasts a similarly furious productivity and consistency across multiple projects. His eighth studio LP under his own name introduces new band the Muggers, featuring longtime collaborator Mikal Cronin, wandering into prog turf amidst the usual fuzz blasts.…
Levitation Imaginings
Pet Sounds is 50 and Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson is headed for Levitation to perform it. To celebrate, producer Al Lover compiled A Tribute to Pet Sounds with covers by festival acts both local (Holy Wave) and global (Brazil’s Boogarins), and sold at Carson Creek Ranch. In the meantime, chew on these renditions. Peggy…
Council: Mobile Homes and Climate Change
City Council gets through a brief agenda the week before budget talks begin
Review: L’Estelle House & the Drafting Room
Charming space still has a few kinks
Pushing Past La Periferia
Cine Las Americas Film Festival aims for a wider reach
Levitation Imaginings
Hate dubstep? Blame Jamaican producer/performer Lee “Scratch” Perry, 80, a pioneer of its root foundation, dub, a miasmal remix of reggae and its Rastaman bass vibrations. Here’s five essential Perry joints. The Congos, Heart of the Congos (1977) Most serious fans would rank this Perry-produced masterpiece among the top handful of reggae albums. The pinnacle…
City Budget Preview Remains Strong, With Notes of Caution
Good times continue?
I Like to Watch
Penny Dreadful and the Showtime curse
Letting Voices Be Heard
Cine Las Americas programming is all about access
Levitation Imaginings
Alt-rock cult poets Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo, aka Gene and Dean Ween – hatched in Pennsylvania, 1984 – aren’t doing any post-reunion press, so I made up this interview using Ween lyrics. Austin Chronicle: Gene, you unexpectedly terminated Ween in 2012. How did you break the news to your bandmates? Gene Ween: Falling out,…
“Every Human Being Is Legal”
St. Andrew’s offers sanctuary to immigrant mother and child
Gay Place
The second annual Austin International Drag Fest returns this weekend
Method Directing
Director Sterlin Harjo hits the streets for Mekko
Levitation Picks & Sleepers
Blurbing the under and overcard
Death Watch: Longtime Death Row Inmate Dies
Max Soffar has died of liver cancer
Levitating Platters
More than any of the aural devotees of the late Sixties and early Seventies, Chicago fivepiece Twin Peaks travels all paths of the overlapping decades. Third album Down in Heaven moves through Monkees-level cheese with the walking bassline and soaring “ba-ba-bahs” of “My Boys,” while “Holding Roses” swings Rolling Stones, guitarist Clay Frankel mastering both…
Reeling in the Hill Country
Escape from the city with the Hill Country Film Festival
International Sleepers
Klaus Johann Grobe Fri., 2:30pm, Elevation Amphitheater Swiss duo singing exclusively in German on their first U.S. tour, a no-frills concoction with hints of funk, krautrock, and an affinity for organ. Imarhan Fri., 3:05pm, Reverberation stage Algerians toting buoyant Tuareg rock and Tinariwen-influenced dance jams from the desert. Purson Fri., 5pm, Elevation Amphitheater UK fivepiece…
Ott Takes on Acevedo
City manager reprimands police chief for comments
Levitating Platters
On Freaks of Nurture, Holy Wave evolves from garage jangle to guitar surges. Voluminous pedals border on shoegaze, the El Paso-to-Austin quintet’s fourth album floating atop a rhythmic haze that serves as the medium. Unfolding dream “California Took My Bobby Away” contrasts seamlessly with the breathless dash of “You Should Lie,” and a brooding oddness…
Sleepers Worth Showing Up Early For
Mild High Club Fri., 3:45pm, Elevation Amphitheater Exactly what the Los Angelenos’ name suggests: sleepy, slacker psych in the vein of “Mac DeMarco after one-too-many weed brownies.” Flavor Crystals Sat., 1:40pm, Levitation Tent Mellow Minneapolis outfit slow burn dazed and droney atmospheres out of faraway vox and space guitar. Nots Sat., 4:10pm, Levitation Tent Lo-fi…
Lee Renaming Brings Out Butter-Knife-Sharp Wit
Don’t ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to
May 7 City of Austin Special Municipal Election
Early Voting April 25-May 3; Election Day: Saturday, May 7.
Chronicle Endorsements
Vote no on Prop. 1
